Can anybody tell me when Iowa swapped out summer for monsoon season? Apparently we were so busy with weddings this spring and summer, the climate switcheroo news flash escaped us.
The mass of vibrant green lawns, not a normal sight during an unusually hot August, made us a wee bit suspicious on our way home from church yesterday. “This is weird,” I commented to Hiram. “Lawns are supposed to turn brown in August.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “In this heat, it takes a lot of water to keep grass this green.” All afternoon, we couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that pressed down upon us, more stifling than the day’s humidity.
Looking back, I wonder if the uneasiness was a premonition of the night to come. We’d no sooner gone to bed than thunder rattled, lightning brightened the windows, and the rain fell. Not one of the three stopped until daybreak. On several occasions, the thunder crashes sent me into horizontal levitation. I thought the noise was the worst of it until my walk when daylight revealed the base of our driveway nearly washed away, and the gravel road to our east completely washed out. The road was positively hopping with toads flooded out of their digs. The stream was out of it’s banks. Worst of all, after my walk, with Hiram high and dry at work, I found ground water standing in the basement. Not as bad as the flood of ’93, but wet just the same.
We expected a flood in March after all the snow last winter. But it didn’t happen.
We were ready for water in June when it rained like ’93. We stayed dry.
We were prepared for a wet wedding in July. We escaped again.
But August? Who ever heard of an Iowa monsoon in August?
I shoulda have paid attention to that premonition and checked the basement before Hiram went to work. He coulda stayed home and started building while I rounded up a couple toads on the washed out road.
Me and the toads want to hop on the ark.
